The United States and other countries are quickly transitioning to digital television (DTV) to take advantage of high definition TV broadcasts. The US, in particular, is slowly moving away from and will ultimately abandon the analog television system. According to current timelines, the US government is calling for the termination of analog TV broadcasts by the year 2006. The use of an analog TV will require the addition of set-top-box down-converters to change the digital broadcasts to the lower-performance analog format such TVs were designed to receive.
Accompanying the transition to DTV is the integration of the IEEE 1394 digital home-networking technology. IEEE 1394 enables DTV and other digital devices of consumer electronics systems that incorporate IEEE 1394 to connect and communicate via single cables (FireWire®) that carry digital video, digital audio, and system control data. A home network system comprising such integrated devices eliminates the myriad of cables and connectors and separate remotes currently necessary to interconnect and control electronic devices for a home theater system. With IEEE 1394 technology, the DTV or some other primary video display unit (PDCU) can be engineered to be the command center of a digital home network system.
However, IEEE 1394 by itself provides no way to control conventionally wired, IR signal controlled, analog audio-video (AV) devices (IRC devices), such as analog VCRs, DVD players, cable and satellite boxes, and AV receivers, and does nothing to eliminate the myriad of cables, connectors and remotes necessary to connect and control a mixed analog and digital home theater network system. The interconnection and control of such systems can be quite complex and unwieldy. For example, simply switching from a cable broadcast to playing a movie on a DVD player may involve numerous device specific remote controls and several iterations through the different layers of control on such remotes. Such a task may require the user to switch between video inputs on the TV, switch between layers on a TV remote control to power on and play the DVD player, and then, if the user has a AV receiver (AVR), switch between layers on the TV remote and shut down the audio output from the TV and switch to an AVR remote control to power up and output audio through the AVR or, if the AVR is the current audio output device, use the AVR remote control to switch between AVR inputs to output the DVD player's audio from the AVR. Completing such tasks is often fraught with frustration especially when the user is not immediately successful in being able to watch and listen to a movie being played on the DVD player.
Thus, it is desirous to be able to centrally and seamlessly control a variety of electronic devices over a variety of protocols from a single input device and provide an easy to use user interface (UI) wherein the complexities of the control of such devices is transparent to the user.